Not Alone

You built the life you were supposed to want. The career, the wins, the whole thing. And lately you've been quietly wondering why you don't want it anymore, and then feeling insane for wondering, because nothing is technically wrong.

You're not insane. It's happening to almost every woman I know.

Krista posted a reel about it that went viral, and the second I saw it I thought, there it is. That's the thing. Every woman she knows is pivoting. Walking away from careers they spent a decade building, from lives that looked good from the outside, toward something they can't fully explain yet.

And I couldn't scroll past it, because it's happening everywhere I turn. My friends. The group chats. Me. So I brought her in, because we had to talk about it.

Here's what we got into.

So much of what we've been calling ambition our whole lives was never ambition. It was a trauma response in a nice outfit. We performed. We over-functioned. We achieved, and got rewarded for it, and quietly ran ourselves into the ground doing it.

Nobody tells you the thing that built your whole life can be the same thing making you disappear.

We got into the difference between being called to leave something and just running from it, because they feel identical and they are not the same thing.

The pieces of ourselves we left behind chasing all of it, and how a lot of us are quietly going back to get her. And then female friendship, which is where I cried, because that's the part nobody prepares you for either.

This one is for the woman quietly outgrowing her life who hasn't told a soul. The one running a life that fit her five years ago and doesn't anymore. And the one starting to suspect that the ambition that got her here isn't the thing that's going to take her where she actually wants to go.

If this is you, tell me in the comments. And if it helped, subscribe. That's what tells the algorithm to bring more women like you here.

FOLLOW KRISTA

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FOLLOW NOT ALONE

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WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT

2:00 The pivot every woman is quietly making

3:08 The year and a half we've been circling this

4:30 Beyond achievement, beyond what everyone told me to be

5:42 When ambition is really a trauma response

7:03 Playing the roles: mom, wife, the woman who has it together

8:18 How our relationships are changing too

9:19 The marriage that ended at thirty-four

11:52 Why women are done performing

13:47 You don't have to fix everything

16:24 What the twenty-year-olds are eating up

18:30 I want visibility: the wanting we perform at work

20:58 I love everybody, I'm having the best time (are you?)

22:22 Giving your emotions to your little girl

25:00 Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes it's a lot

28:20 What her flow actually looks like

30:40 The leadership coach, and doing the work

33:00 Called to leave, or running away? They feel identical

33:59 What do I actually want?

35:15 Why the saying-no conversation triggers her

36:07 Can I? Should I? Do I even want to?

38:40 Loneliness, and what it's really telling you

40:00 How to truthfully answer what you want

43:50 You're becoming a whole new woman

45:53 Watching it happen to the women around her

48:48 The divorce phase, and coming out the other side

51:20 How she showed up in the hardest times

54:00 The premonition, and trusting what she knew

57:36 Holding good and grateful and still wanting more

1:00:00 Female friendship, and learning how to receive love

1:02:30 When we feel like we're overdoing something

1:05:00 Her village of women

1:07:17 Making your next choice a soulful one

1:08:30 The women over fifty living the most beautiful lives

1:10:54 A decade in spirituality, and what it taught her

1:13:00 The need to optimize, and letting it go

1:15:00 Rapid fire

1:16:00 What women aren't saying out loud

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A four-year-old boy who can't sit still for circle time used to just be a four-year-old boy. Now it's an evaluation, a diagnosis, a meeting where you nod politely and then cry in the car. That's where this conversation started, and it's the one I've been wanting to have for a long time. I'm a mother of three boys, and Dr. Michael Milobsky said the thing I've felt in my body for years: most of the boys who end up in his office are completely normal. The label is the problem, not the boy.

He's a pediatrician of thirty years and a father of seven, and he told me he learned more from raising his own kids than from any of his training. He changed my mind on things I walked in sure about, which I don't say often. We get into why our boys are in crisis and what mislabeling does to a boy by the time he's fourteen. What our daughters actually need to grow up confident, which is not the conversation girl moms are being handed. Why he calls ADHD an operating system and not a disorder. And the one thing a father gives a child that a mother can't, which, to my surprise, is not discipline. It's regulation.

Then it turned, the way the best ones do. He told me about the pain he carried in his body for years and refused to look at, until it cost him his leg, and what he found waiting on the other side of finally listening to it. His line for it: losing his leg let him grow wings. I came into this conversation thinking about my children. I left it thinking about myself.

This is for the mother who has been told her child has a problem. For the one quietly certain she's doing all of this wrong. For the one who keeps promising she'll get to herself later. Our kids are not broken. A lot of what we're labeling in them is really just what we haven't looked at in ourselves, and you being okay is the single most powerful thing you'll ever give them. This is Dr. Michael Milobsky.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Dr. Michael:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr_michael_milobsky
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_mikem
Your Kids Will Be Fine (podcast): https://www.youtube.com/@Dr_Michael_Milobsky
Chicken Soup Concierge Care: https://www.chickensoupdenver.com/

Follow Valeria:
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Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/7798209
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What we talked about:
2:06 How I found him, and why I manifested this conversation
2:47 The one parenting book I threw across the room
3:53 Why boys are in trouble right now
4:31 The normal boys getting labeled as a problem
5:10 Boy brains and girl brains are on different timelines
5:34 What actually changed inside the schools
7:00 What boys really need between three and five
8:42 What a label at four does to a boy at fourteen
10:06 Mislabeled boys grow into angry men
10:47 What Denmark gets right about early childhood
11:32 How to make up for it if your kids are past that window
12:04 The five things every kid needs, starting with a third place
13:03 Boredom is a skill now
13:39 Why we stopped letting our kids risk and fail
14:20 Why did we become this way?
14:56 The culture of safetyism, and the phone as an umbilical cord
19:11 Our parents were submarines
20:02 How our own anxiety gets passed straight to our kids
20:48 The demotion, and whether mothers do this more
21:32 The most important skill: learning to apologize to your kids
22:11 When mothers need to step back, starting when they walk
23:19 Why stepping back gets harder as they get older
24:43 The unresolved wounds we parent from
25:22 What's happening with our daughters that nobody's naming
26:49 The girl I was scared to raise
27:13 How a daughter absorbs her mother's emotional weather
27:31 The two modes so many men were raised with
29:10 The unique thing a mother and father each give a daughter
33:00 The five things, and why all roads lead to the phone
34:29 The right age for a smartphone
35:25 Why it has to be collective, not one family on an island
36:46 Shabbat, and the power of a weekly reset
37:00 ADHD is not a disorder, it's an operating system
39:29 Should you get the diagnosis, and the label fear
40:30 The negative story kids write about themselves without one
41:13 Landing on the right professional, not just medication
43:30 The other things that look exactly like ADHD
46:19 Iron, omega-3, and vitamin D
49:11 What raising seven kids taught him that medical school didn't
50:19 Parenting anxiety, and the Lindsay Clancy case
53:41 Where do mothers actually go for help?
54:08 Postpartum depression is neurobiology, not weakness
1:00:36 Why we're the most lost generation, and the village we lost
1:02:22 The night-nurse gift, and building each other a village
1:03:07 What a father gives that a mother can't: regulation
1:04:14 The two crayons in the box: anger or withdrawal
1:06:30 Where modern culture gets fatherhood most wrong
1:07:00 Planting and building: the two jobs of a parent
1:11:58 His own story, and the body that kept score for years
1:14:30 Losing the leg to grow wings
1:16:00 The body keeps score, and getting to yourself before it's too late
1:19:17 What he'd say to a mother listening right now
1:19:30 Rapid fire
1:21:00 What parents aren't saying out loud

This episode touches on postpartum depression and maternal mental health. If you or someone you love is struggling, Postpartum Support International can help: call or text 1-800-944-4773, or visit postpartum.net.

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You've been called too much your whole life. Too loud, too opinionated, too intense, too independent, too picky. You've done the work, sat through the dates, read the books, and still gone home wondering what's wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. You've just been looking in the wrong places.

Serena Kerrigan spent six years as the loudest, most confident voice in the dating conversation, the woman millions turned to, and she almost didn't write her book because being single made her feel like a fraud. In this episode, she and Valeria get into the reframe that changed everything, and it's the same one that led Serena to the man she now lives with: she met him on a stranger's podcast, reading out a text from a guy who had ghosted her, and he told her she wasn't too much, she was just looking in the wrong places.

They talk about why she invented a whole confident persona at eighteen because she was insecure, the year she went quiet building something no one could see, why the most successful women walk around in masculine energy that quietly keeps love out, and the dating advice she's had to fact-check now that she's actually in love. And the line every woman needs to hear: stop calling yourself picky. You're not picky. You're refusing to settle.

You were the prize the whole time.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Serena:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serenakerrigan
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@serenakerrigan
Her book, Let's F*cking Date: https://letsfuckingdate.com/

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Follow Not Alone:
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Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/

Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/shop/collections/5542133
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
2:44 The book this isn't, and the book it actually is
3:31 Eighteen, insecure, and inventing SFK as armor
4:15 Standing at the mirror, saying the name out loud
5:17 When confidence starts as a performance
6:24 The night people were blown away that she stopped caring
7:04 I'm actually a sensitive person and an empath
8:30 When the persona became a crutch
9:27 The fine line of knowing when to turn it on
10:29 What guy is going to want to deal with that?
11:07 Altering yourself before you even walk into the date
12:21 Holding up mirrors to yourself
12:47 Going back to figure out what wasn't working
13:07 I didn't think I was worthy of a relationship
13:49 Deciding to show up as herself, not the persona
14:03 Why she walked away to write the book
14:56 When she finally felt like she figured it out
16:09 Calling her agent: what if I wrote a dating book?
17:20 I'm going to stop editing myself
17:38 On a stranger's podcast, reading out the text that ghosted her
18:06 For the right guy, you'll be the perfect amount
18:43 Meeting the man who saw the soft person underneath
19:22 What to actually look for: feeling safe
19:48 When you don't trust yourself around someone
20:40 When you meet the right person, the anxiety goes quiet
21:08 The daddy issues reframe, and the not-enough wound
22:04 The older man, and what she was really chasing
22:46 Whatever you want, that's fine: losing herself on dates
23:12 The dating advice she's had to fact-check now
24:06 The wall she put up when it was actually going well
25:21 Both of you still figuring out who you are
26:54 The three Ps: become the prize, enjoy the ride, never settle
27:32 We're so hard on ourselves
28:16 It's not men are trash, and it's not mason jar affirmations
29:37 The only thing you can control is how you show up
30:34 When was the last time you did something outside your comfort zone?
31:29 Writing the book was the most uncomfortable thing
32:04 A beautiful Miami story
33:28 Why stepping outside your comfort zone changes everything
34:50 You have to be outside, meeting people
35:18 You're most magnetic in your own energy
35:50 Why the modern woman keeps love out with masculine armor
40:00 Stop calling yourself picky. You're refusing to settle
45:00 Rapid fire
50:00 What women aren't saying out loud

Disclaimer: The links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you.

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We live in a world that has made being a founder a whole personality: move fast, be visible, build in public, become the brand, and make sure everyone sees how hard you're working. Dianna Cohen built Crown Affair by doing almost the exact opposite.

Crown Affair is at Sephora and Goop, with Gwyneth Paltrow as one of its earliest investors. But this conversation isn't really about beauty. Dianna built her company around three words: "take your time". And a few years into building it, she made a decision most founders would struggle to make: she stepped down as CEO after realizing her nervous system wasn't built for the way she'd been leading.

We talk about why slowness can be a strategy, what it means to lead from feminine energy, the difference between being an operator and a creator, and why creativity and intuition deserve a place in leadership conversations. Dianna also shares what burnout taught her, why our bodies often know things before our brains do, and the line I haven't stopped thinking about: when everything in you says push harder, sometimes the answer is to do the opposite.

This episode is for anyone tired of moving at everyone else's pace, and wondering whether success really has to cost you your sanity.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Dianna:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diannacohen
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@diannacohen
Crown Affair: https://crownaffair.com/
Take Your Time Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/take-your-time/id1896516883
Substack: https://dianna.substack.com/

Follow Valeria:
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:
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Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
2:02 Meeting in Miami four years ago
3:31 Building a world around taking your time
5:13 Time is the ultimate luxury
6:25 It started from a Google Doc
9:02 Getting into beauty and why ignorance is bliss
10:39 Two years of nights and weekends before going all in
12:45 The bathroom as a sacred space
14:11 Is slowness actually a strategy?
16:48 What she gained by going slow
17:43 Stepping down as CEO
19:27 Couples therapy for a founder and operator
20:04 The nervous system that wasn't built for the way she was leading
20:32 Do the opposite of what your brain is telling you
20:52 “Happy people don't start companies”
22:36 Gary and Valeria's own sabotage
26:33 Operator vs. creator
27:44 The fear of being seen
30:35 Why the CMO should be the last hire
32:46 Creativity and feminine energy in a masculine industry
35:23 What feminine energy looks like in practice
36:04 Intuition is a hard skill
39:30 Playing in the sandbox again
42:28 Why isn't creativity in leadership books?
45:15 The Artist's Way
48:53 Trust vs. faith
52:04 Why we don't talk enough about the nervous system
52:55 Our bodies speak a different language than our brains
55:36 Growing up in a household that didn't allow crying
58:14 Scarcity and learning to receive abundance
1:00:22 Success with emptiness inside
1:03:03 Lessons from iconic women she worked for
1:05:40 Founder culture and cosplaying CEO
1:07:18 Expert, creator, celebrity and product brands
1:08:57 The triangle of delusion
1:11:37 How many people you move—not how many you reach
1:12:00 Why she'll never build in public
1:16:33 The two-phone trick for Instagram addiction
1:19:37 What women should understand about creativity
1:21:30 Rapid fire
1:25:30 What women aren't saying out loud

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A while back I posted something about my kids, and a woman sent me a DM that has been quietly sitting in the back of my mind ever since. She said, it feels like you resisted motherhood for a while and now you've fully embraced it. What changed? And here's the honest thing. If that message had landed in my inbox two years ago, it would have sent me straight down a dark hole. It would have fed the mom guilt so well I'd have needed months to climb back out.

So this one is me finally answering her, out loud. I had a very specific image of what motherhood would look like, and when it actually arrived, it looked nothing like the picture. I was exhausted. I was, if I'm being honest, bored. And I felt so much guilt for even thinking that, because everyone around me seemed to be glowing in exactly the season that was making me feel lost. I thought I was failing at the one thing I was supposed to be built for.

What I've come to understand is the thing I most needed someone to tell me back then. Loving your children and feeling fully lit up by every single stage of raising them are two different things. You can adore your kids and still not feel like yourself in the baby years. That doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you a human one. And some of us, it turns out, come alive in the chapters that come later.

This is for the woman quietly wondering why she doesn't feel the way she was told she would. The one comparing her insides to everyone else's highlight reel. The one grieving the version of herself she was before, not knowing the best is still ahead of her. Nobody warns you that some seasons of motherhood just won't feel like yours. I'm telling you now, so you don't spend two years thinking something is wrong with you. There isn't. You're not alone.

New episodes of Not Alone every Wednesday. Subscribe so you never miss one.

Follow Valeria:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valerialipovetsky
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@valeria.lipovetsky
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerialipovetskyblog

Follow Not Alone:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notalonepod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@notalone.pod
Podcast: https://www.notalonepod.com/

Shop my look from this episode: https://shopmy.us/collections/7358472
Amazon Storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/valerialipovetsky

What we talked about:
0:00 The DM that made me stop
0:52 Two years ago this would have wrecked me
1:37 The very specific image of motherhood I had
2:22 When it arrived, it looked nothing like the picture
2:43 I was so bored, and so guilty for feeling it
3:07 The woman I was before the kids
4:19 Trying, and failing, to find one clear memory
5:03 Feeling like I was failing at what I was built for
5:30 Everyone else looked like they were in their flow
6:20 What the curated feed does to mothers
6:44 The borrowed guilt from a script
7:09 But what about the rest of us?
7:32 Loving your kids and being lit up by every stage are two different things
7:55 What shifted with an eleven and a seven-year-old
8:19 The conversations are my favorite part now
9:08 The expectations I grew up carrying
10:38 Not every woman is built for the baby chapter
11:08 To the woman who doesn't feel it yet
11:31 It doesn't mean you're failing. It means you're human
12:14 The comparison loosened its grip
12:36 Sometimes your best motherhood years come later
13:00 You are not alone

Disclaimer: The links in this description are sponsor or affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I may earn a credit or commission at no additional cost to you.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices